


you'll know where to find me

by kingdomdizzy



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Bittersweet Ending, Forgive Me, I'll add more warnings if people don't like the end lmao, M/M, Sad, but with some cute moments, hospital au, no beta we die like men, this is what I get for opening a blank document with sad music playing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2021-01-27 07:57:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21388756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kingdomdizzy/pseuds/kingdomdizzy
Summary: Keith would later say that, no, he did not drool at the sight of Lance, that it was the painkillers and the fact he just had brain surgery, but no one believed him.
Relationships: Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Comments: 17
Kudos: 93
Collections: fav. VLD FFs





	you'll know where to find me

**Author's Note:**

> the only excuse i have for this is the fact that i watch a lot of greys anatomy and last week i listened to a copious amount of sad music  
please enjoy, and i'm sorry :))))

The day Lance came to the hospital turned out to be one of the best days of Keith’s life. Of course, at the time he didn’t see it that way. Not when he had been rushed into emergency surgery because there was a bleed in his brain, just as there had been last week, and a few weeks before that. It was always in the same area of his brain, and the doctors had woken him up numerous times telling him that everything should now be okay but upon his return home he has come crawling back, eyes rolled in the back of his head and a headache unlike any other pounding against his skull. 

So, this time when he woke up, there was another guy in the bed next to him. It usually remained empty since this wing of the hospital was for people who could drop like a fly at any second. Keith tried not to get connected to any of them for obvious reasons. 

But this guy wasn’t like the usual timebombs. He looked to be around Keith’s age, fiddling with a handheld game system in his lap and blowing tufts of his cropped brown hair out of his forehead. Whatever he was playing must’ve been frustrating, because his tongue was caught between his teeth in concentration. 

Keith would later say that, no, he did not drool at the sight of Lance, that it was the painkillers and the fact he just had brain surgery, but no one believed him. 

Something on his bed must have made a noise, because Lance suddenly looked up from his game and smiled. “Finally, you’re awake. I’ve been waiting for you to wake up for hours. I don’t know how you can handle being cooped up all alone in here, it’s so _boring_.”

He listened to the consistent beeping and rustling of nurses outside of the room and briefly wondered how he hadn’t gone crazy. “You get used to it,” Keith said.

Lance just nodded, shutting off his game system. “So, what’re you in for? If you’ve gotten used to it I can only assume it’s been awhile.”

“I’ve been in and out of here for the past six months with unexplained brain bleeds.” Keith knows this speech by heart. With all the different doctors and nurses that round through this room, it has become a routine of sorts. “Everytime I go in for surgery they think it’s fixed, but then I pass out or have a seizure and the cycle starts all over again. My skull looks like a jigsaw puzzle and none of the doctors are sure how I’m still alive.”

Lance pursed his lips, taking it all in, then laughed. “Well, we both seem to be walking miracles of life, I guess.”

Keith readjusted himself so he was facing Lance’s bed. “What do you mean?”

“Well,” he motioned to his chest, “I should be dead, too.”

Lance apparently started having troubles with his blood circulation around age ten or so. His fingers and toes would randomly go numb, sometimes in the middle of the night he would wake up unable to feel his arms. It reached a point where one time he was supposed to be giving a speech in class and both of his legs fell asleep, causing him to fall and hit his head. That was when his parents took him to the hospital. 

After a few tests, they found a small hole in his heart that affected his blood flow and circulation. They took him in for open heart surgery, fixed the problem, and sent him on his way. However, after awhile that created more problems. He was suddenly getting a lot of chest pain, would cough up blood, and even suffered from a mild heart attack at the age of fifteen. When they took him back to the hospital, x-rays revealed that the hole had ripped and grown bigger, meaning Lance had to be put on strict bed rest until they could fix it again. 

Except, they couldn’t fix it. None of the cardiac surgeons would even go near a heart hole that big. It was a risk as soon as he was put under. So, his parents searched all over the country for someone who could do the surgery. It took a long time, but eventually they ended up here.

“I’m scheduled for another open heart surgery sometime this week,” he said. The smile that had stayed on his face through the whole story suddenly faltered. “I hope this guy fixes it right. I don’t know if you know this, but having a major organ that doesn’t function properly kinda blows.”

Keith chuckled, pointing to the bandages wrapped around his head. “Trust me, I know the feeling.” 

They both laughed, causing nurses outside to glance through the windows to make sure neither of them were dying. For the first time in six months, Keith felt strangely happy that he could die at any moment. What was there to gain from being stuck in a hospital knowing you’re going to live just fine? That’s time wasted. And there was nothing wasteful about spending time with Lance, Keith was sure of that. 

+++

“Four years old, my sister pushed me off of the swingset and I hit the wooden bar keeping the wood chips contained. Four stitches, but my hair covers it pretty well.”

Keith looked carefully across Lance’s hairline and sure enough, he spotted the small mark that had healed under his hair. He could imagine a small Lance, screaming and crying on the way to the emergency room with blood on his forehead, but then being quick to tell his friends about this awesome scar that he has now. It seems to be the same way now, Keith thinks; he shows his different scars like they were prizes he’d won. 

Keith, on the other hand, hardly ever showed off his scars. The only impressive ones were from surgery, anyway. Hardly anything to get excited about. But Lance was excited, even after the doctors took off his bandages and revealed all the jagged cuts keeping his head together. Lance looked at all of them in wonder, wanting to know every detail of all of them. 

“This one,” he pointed to a section on the very top of his head where the lines were the most faded, “was my very first surgery. I actually got it when I was about six because I was getting terrible migraines and passed out, so they had to relieve pressure on my brain.”

Lance lifted his hand towards Keith’s head, making him flinch away slightly. After a pause, Lance gave him a small smile. “Can I?”

He nodded tentatively, but Lance’s fingers were cool as they traced over the scar. Doctors were always so forceful, and their hands were always freezing. Lance’s hands were cold, but a different cold. One that held enough warmth behind them to make up for the goose bumps they brought about. He would never want another doctor to touch him again. 

“You’ve been through a lot, huh?”

The question caught Keith off guard. Hearing Lance’s story had only made him realize how lucky he was that constant pain didn’t flood through his body, but he certainly had the prizes to show for all the head trauma. That counted for something. 

It had only been three days since Lance showed up in Keith’s room, but spending nearly every waking moment together and usually seeing glances of one another's ass after getting up to use the restroom really made you feel close to someone. And Keith was sure he hadn’t seen an ass that great in his life. 

“Yeah,” Keith sighed into Lances touch, which had moved to other places on his head. “I guess I have.”

The only think illuminating the room was the lamp on the nightstand that separated their beds. After the last nurse had come to check on them for the night, Lance had slid into Keith’s bed, saying that since his surgery was tomorrow he couldn’t possibly sleep. Keith didn’t blame him; he often lost a lot of sleep waiting for his brain to spring a leak again.

“This one is a pretty sick looking one.” 

Keith was taken out of his thoughts as Lance started trying to pull down his gown, but grew frustrated and just took his arms out instead, pushing it down to his stomach and leaving his chest bare. He pointed to an ‘s’ shaped scar on his chest, right above his heart. “Open heart surgery. I think they’re gonna open this same one tomorrow which is lame. I kinda want a new one.”

Keith felt an urge to reach out and touch it, but held back. “Why is it so jagged?”

Lance shrugged. “My parents asked them the same thing, but they said it was standard procedure for open heart surgery on kids like me.”

“It’s pretty badass, though. A cool story to tell your future kids, right?”

Lance’s face fell. “I guess. I’ve told myself not to think too far into the future, y’know? No use getting your hopes up when you could die on the table tomorrow.”

Keith tried to think of something, anything, to say to make him happy again. Lance didn’t deserve to be sad. He had a good point; when you could die on the table tomorrow, might as well try to do everything today. 

In a quick motion, he reached his hand over and set it on top of Lance’s chest so his fingers gently traced the scar. “You told me you have some nieces and nephews, yeah? You could tell them about their awesome Uncle Lance who has and ‘s’ on his chest just like Superman.”

This made him smile, and Keith could feel his heart beating steadily. Lance’s hand landed on top of Keith’s squeezing slightly. “Thanks, Keith.”

“Of course. And you’re _not_ gonna die on that table tomorrow.”

Lance looked at him, skin glowing from the low light of the lamp and eyes slightly red, and nodded. They fell asleep like that, Keith’s hand still on Lance’s chest and Lance’s head resting on Keith’s shoulder. 

A nurse came in the morning and woke them up, saying that if a doctor found Lance out of his bed they would threaten to make him change rooms. They thanked her, and she left with a small wink that only Keith was able to catch, making his cheeks warm up. 

When they came to take him in for surgery, he gave Keith a small nod and a smile before being wheeled out of the room. Keith suddenly felt as thought he had a thousand things he wanted to say, but as he disappeared around the corner of the doorway, he just whispered to himself, “You’ll be okay.”

+++

It felt like an unceremonious amount of hours before Lance was wheeled back in, passed out in the bed with a bandage peaking over the top of his hospital gown. Keith looked at the nurse for an affirmation to his thoughts, that everything went smoothly and that Lance was okay, but he didn’t receive one. Instead, she just glanced up at him, her face unrevealing and cold, then turned to leave. 

The waiting game had begun. Keith’s fingers twitched nervously everytime he looked over to Lance and found him still asleep. He told himself to wait a certain amount of time before checking again, remembering something his father told him when he was young. _A watched pot never boils_ or something to that effect. But he couldn’t help the small glances that he stole every few seconds, just to be sure that his chest was still rising and falling. 

Not long after that, his family showed up. Keith, ever the person to avoid unnecessary contact with strangers, pretended to be asleep. Though he had heard wonderful things about his family, they were far too concerned with their son to fictitiously create interest in Keith. After they walked in the door, Keith couldn’t keep track of how many different voices he heard, a doctor followed, shut the door and the curtain to separate Keith. 

“The surgery was unsuccessful.”

Keith’s eyes flew open, careful not to move and create a noise.

“What… what does that mean?” The lady, he assumed was Keith’s mother, had tears in her voice.

“The hole in his heart was far too deteriorated to fix without the risk of puncturing another area, so we decided that his best option is to be put onto the donor list and wait for a new heart.”

His mother began sobbing, her cries being muffled by someone shoulder. He heard someone shushing a small child that was trying to ask a question. An older man, he assumed his father, grunted slightly. “So, what? We just have to wait for our son to die? Or for someone else his age to die so he can get a new heart?”

“For the most part, yes,” the doctor replied, obviously trying to keep her voice even. “Lance’s heart is still very unstable, so he will need to remain here at the hospital. When a heart shows up anywhere near here suitable for him, we won’t waste a minute.”

She left to leave them alone and wait for Lance to wake up. Keith, still trying to remain still, let a tear roll down his cheek as he listened to Lance’s family cry along with him. They began talking amongst themselves, but Keith wasn’t listening. Not until Lance woke up. 

“G’morning, guys,” he croaked. Keith could imagine what he looked like, stretching his arms up and rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. “What’d the good doctors tell you? Am I gonna be able to beat the kiddos to the mailbox everyday?” 

Keith did his best to block out the sound of Lance breaking down in tears at the news. It felt worse than any pain Keith had known, and it weighed on his chest the longer he couldn’t be one of the people to wrap his arms around him in comfort. Everyone was still crying when the nurse came in to say that visiting hours were over, and they promised that they would be back tomorrow which his favorite food and whatever would make him feel better, but Keith knew the feeling of figuring out that you might never get better. There was nothing in the world that could fix it.

When they left, Keith listened to Lance sniffle a few times before he scooted to the edge of his bed and ripped the curtain away. Lance looked up at him, tears staining his cheeks and eyes red and tired. At the sight of him, Keith started crying, too. He fell into Lance’s arms, fingers falling on the bandages that covered his scar, and just apologized over and over. 

“I’m so sorry, Lance.”

Lance shook his head, wiping half of his face. “There is nothing to be sorry about. They couldn’t fix me. I’m at the greatest hospital in the country, with some of the best doctors in the world, and they couldn’t fix me.” A bitter laugh rolled through his body. “Now I either have to wait to die, or wait for someone else to die.”

Keith looked up at him, feeling such heartache and sadness at losing who had quickly become his best friend. “You won’t die,” he whispered, so low that Lance might not have heard him. “I promise you, you won’t die.”

His eyes remained focused on the ceiling until Keith moved up so they were face to face. They searched each others’ eyes, waiting for something to pull them apart like a nurse for the final check-in of the night or an alarm calling for a crash cart somewhere near them. But nothing happened. 

Instead, Lance glanced downwards at Keith’s lips, slightly parted from his stuffy nose being unable to breathe, and kissed him. It was slow, slow enough that Keith moved his hand carefully from his chest into his hair, his thumb brushing over the dried tears on his cheek, and Lance’s hand moved to Keith’s back, pulling him closer with his cold hands. 

When they pulled apart, Lance smiled for the first time that night, and Keith let out a breathy laugh. “Now you’re _definitely_ not going to die.”

“As long as you promise to kiss me everyday that I’m alive,” he said, and there was nothing Keith wanted more.

+++

The waiting game that Keith often found himself playing now included Lance. Instead of waiting for another brain bleed to drag him into the operating room, they were also waiting for a call to come that a heart had been found for Lance. Or, as the doctors put much more eloquently, they were waiting for Lance’s heart to begin to fail. 

Everyday usually brought another visitor. Usually Lance’s family, either all of them as a group or just his parents or siblings that wanted to see him. Keith had underestimated the size of his family. Two of his older siblings had kids of their own, to whom he proudly showed them his Superman scar. He also had three younger siblings who always had a school project to show or a question about math homework that he could easily answer. His parents also showed up, and Keith finally met them. 

Keith’s father sometimes showed up, too. It wasn’t often, and Keith knew that to pay for his medical bills he had to work a lot more, but he had a habit of randomly bringing his old photo albums which Lance quickly took a liking to. Keith begrudgingly asked to keep one here until his next visit, which his father agreed to before placing a small kiss on his head and leaving for work once again. 

“_This_ is what your hair looked like?”

Lance was pointing and giggling at a photo taken not long before Keith’s first surgery, on his first day of that school year. The look on his face really exhibited how ecstatic he was about it. “Yeah, and?”

“You had a mullet! That’s so cute!”

Keith shoved him slightly. “It was _not_ a mullet.”

“Oh, it’s so a mullet. I can’t wait until it grows out again so I can see it for myself.”

Lance didn’t seem to notice when Keith glanced over at him. Things of the future had still been a sort of sore spot for them both, but Keith suddenly felt… strange. “I don’t think it’ll grow out.” 

This caught his attention, pulling his eyes away from the album. “I just meant, uh… if. If you ever get a chance to grow it out, y’know?”

Keith just nodded, knowing that it was hard to not think of the future. It had been about a month since Lance’s failed surgery, and things had gotten about as serious as they could in a hospital room with two kids who could easily drop dead. The nurses stopped telling them to stay in their own bed at night. The kissing was also nice, and something that Keith was embarrassed to admit he had never experienced before.

“Jeez,” Lance laughed, rubbing his thumb over Keith’s bottom lip. “If you had told me that I would’ve at least _tried_ to make it a little more romantic.”

“That’s exactly why I _didn’t_ tell you,” Keith groaned. He buried his head in Lance’s neck as he laughed, mushing about how cute he was when he got embarrassed. “Shaddup.”

They continued laughing, kissing in between each breath they tried to catch until they landed where they always ended, resting against each other and listening to their hearts beat. 

“What’re you gonna do? Are you thinking about leaving?”

Keith had been waiting for a question like this to pop up. Since it had been the longest he had gone without another brain bleed appearing, the doctors started mentioning the option of Keith leaving the hospital to go back home. He pushed it away at first; there was no concept in his mind that involved leaving Lance alone here while he waited to live or die. He wanted to stay.

But, the doctors went from suggesting to requiring. This bed was needed for people in worse conditions. They wouldn’t kick Keith out of the hospital completely if he didn’t want to leave, but they would at least move him to a different room. Staying at the hospital also meant more for his father to pay for.

“I don’t know. I guess I’m also just waiting for something to happen.” He looked up at Lance, pressing a light kiss to his jaw. “I’m waiting to know that you’re going to live.”

Lance ran his fingers over the scars on Keith’s head, finally starting to get covered by a thin layer of hair. “I live everyday that I’m with you.”

+++

Keith left the hospital a few days after that, promising to visit Lance everyday. “I’ll be the first one you see when you get a new heart, I swear.”

He didn’t tell him, but Lance stole one of the old pictures from Keith’s photo albums, keeping it under his pillow and bringing it out at night right before he turned the lamp off. It was the one from his first day of school, not long before he came to the hospital with his mullet reaching to touch his shoulders and a smile hiding behind the scowl aimed at the camera. Lance liked to think he’d be able to see it for real, one day. 

Keith kept his promise, visiting as soon as the day after he had moved back home. It kept a steady pace for another week, until Lance received a call from Keith’s dad. “He’s just feeling unwell today,” he said simply, “he doesn’t want to get anyone in the hospital more sick, especially not you.”

“Is it his head?”

“Just a fever,” he said, which didn’t really answer his question but the line cut dead afterwards, anyway.

Lance waited patiently for Keith to get better, even as he got worse. It had become a large effort to breathe properly, and the nights without Keith’s warmth left his body well below temperature. He had started thinking about death, how easy it would be to simply stop breathing, but he refused. _I need to see Keith,_ he thought. _One more time._

When his parents told him that the hospital had found a heart for him, he was more excited at the prospect of being greeted by Keith than having proper circulation. “I need to tell Keith,” Lance croaked, doing his best to keep his excitement from literally killing him. “I need to—”

“The doctors are gonna get you into surgery right away,” his mother said. “We will get a hold of Keith’s father and let him know. Hopefully Keith is feeling well enough.”

_He will be,_ Lance thought. _He promised._

And that’s what he reminded himself, even as he went under for surgery. Lance closed his eyes, feeling his whole body go numb.

_You’ll be okay._

Lance woke up with those words ringing in his ears. It was the same, groggy feeling that washed over him after every surgery, but this time was slightly different. He could breathe. In fact, he could even hold his breath for more than five seconds. His fingertips felt warm, and none of his toes were asleep. He brushed his hand over the bandage on his chest and felt the steady rhythm of the heart. His heart. 

A struggled cough broke him out of his thoughts. For a brief second, Lance saw Keith. After a blink, it turned out to be Keith’s father, instead. He tried to hide his disappointment, but it must’ve been obvious with the bitter laugh that he let out. “I know I’m not who you want to see.”

“I was just… expecting him.” Lance’s fingers fidgeted as he nodded. “Is Keith still not feeling well?”

At this, Keith’s father rubbed his eyes with his palms, revealing bloodshot eyes. “No.”

“He… is? Or he isn’t?”

“Keith… is dead.”

Lance choked on his breath. The beeping on the machine next to him accelerated slightly as his body took in the news. “I… he,” Lance was struggling to breathe and form any coherent sentence, but his mind felt fried. “He p-promised.”

His dad sighed. “I know.”

“How did—” Lance took a deep breath, holding his tears back. “What happened?”

“Well, it was like I told you. A fever.” There was a struggle in his voice, the same one that Lance felt bubbling in his throat. “Keith told me it was nothing to worry about. He said it happened all the time at the hospital. I guess if I had come by more, I would’ve known that he was lying.”

Lance was working a million miles per hour to comprehend what he was saying. “He… w-why would he lie about that? He knows the signs of— why didn’t he—”

“Hey,” he shouted. Lance didn’t realize how loud he had gotten until he was breathing heavily. “He had a plan.”

Keith’s dad pulled out an envelope and handed it to Lance. He only stared at it, waiting for another sort of explanation. “What’s this?”

“Yesterday morning, Keith collapsed. I brought him into the hospital so they could open him up and fix his brain bleed but… it was worse this time. They couldn’t fix it despite how hard they tried. When they gave me his belongings, that letter had been in his pocket, addressed to you.”

Lance looked down at the envelope, crinkled from the inside of Keith’s pocket. “Why would he have this on him?”

“That’s what I was wondering, but they had found another note. For me.”

He took out a folded piece of paper and handed it to Lance. He carefully unfolded it and carefully read the words scrawled across.

_Give my heart to Lance. It’s already his._

He suddenly felt as though fire was pulsing through his veins. He quickly and carefully opened the envelope in his lap, hands shaking uncontrollably as tears finally started falling down his face. The words on the page were written with more care, more concentration. 

_I love you. _

_I don’t think I’ll ever be able to tell you that in person, but this is proof. And if my idea, sick and twisted as it might be, works, then you’ll know where to find me. It is yours, and I know you’ll take care of it. _

_You’ll be okay._   
_Love Always,_   
_Keith_

Sobs racked through Lance’s body as he clutched the paper to his chest, to Keith’s heart now forever a part of him. He looked up to Keith’s father, now standing and ready to leave the room. “I’m sorry.”

He shook his head. “Don’t be, kid. He knew what he was doing. Now it’s on you to live.”

Lance watched him leave, feeling somehow empty and full all at the same time. He reached behind him and pulled out the picture hidden under his pillow, letting out a watery laugh and pressing a soft kiss against the cold film. “I live everyday that I’m with you.”


End file.
